So I was given today a set of teachings that—actually three sets of teachings—to as much as possible, will compress the instructions that we need to have, and compose them in as coherent a way, and to do it for those at different levels of readiness for Self-realization. So I don’t know if I’ll be able to get to all of the notes I was given to transmit, but in general, we have Three Sets of Pontifex Points to Ponder.
Now, you all know pontifex, which is shortened by the Catholics to pontiff, actually comes from the early French. You know, pont is a bridge, right? Sur le pont d’Avignon—everyone knows that one. So the pont is the bridge, the fex is the building of a bridge. So these are the instructions of how to build a bridge to bring your consciousness from samsara to nirvana. And then you can wear a pontiff’s hat when you do that.
So set one is for the top-class students; it’s not for everyone. It’s for those whose hair is on fire, or your heart is on fire, even, I think, more importantly, for union with the Supreme Self, and so this set is for those who are ready to take the instructions straight, in the purest form that they can be, that I can relay them, at least.
So, Set One, these are The Seven Resolutions of the Buddhi. The buddhi is the part of the soul that discerns, and it can be at either high resolution or low resolution. And so this is the points that will hopefully help you shift the resolution. OK?
So for the ego—because I’m assuming that some of us are still in the ego and that’s why the bridge is required—for the ego whose consciousness is in a delusional state, that delusion has caused reality to seem to come in two polarized states of mind: the samsaric state of mind, and the nirvanic state of mind, OK? So samsara and nirvana are not places, they’re not realms, they’re simply states of mind, OK? They are entirely internal, and as you shift your state of mind from one locus to the other, voila, you are in nirvana rather than samsara. So it’s nothing that has any external activity involved, OK? It’s simply a focus on that level of your consciousness that is completely accessible, but that the ego has separated it from its own nirvanic dimension and is determined to stay in the samsaric state of mind. It’s determined, you see, this is the obstacle. In fact, I would go so far as to say the ego forbids you to leave samsara for nirvana. It’s forbidden, because once you leave samsara for nirvana, there’s no ego.
So we could say that for the ego, these will also appear as an egoic type of consciousness, and a non-egoic form of consciousness, OK? If you’re in an ego, if there’s an I-thought, if you believe you are a separate individual acting in a world of bodies and of multiplicity, then you’re in the samsaric state of mind. And if you’re in a non-egoic state, that will not be the case—there will not be a sense of difference, a sense of subject-object duality. So that is how the polarization tends to express itself, and it also expresses itself in terms of the difference between life and death. The ego wants to stay alive; it believes it is alive and that nirvana is death, and it’s trying to prevent its death. It doesn’t want to encourage it, right? It’s doing whatever it can to stay alive, to survive, even though there’s a death drive—let’s leave that part out of it—but nonetheless, there’s a desire on the ego to stay alive. And the ego conceives of nirvana as death—and death, meaning a lack of consciousness.
This is a delusion. It’s not the case, but all of this creates the resistance, and one has to become aware of that polarization and ponder the possibility that, in fact, it is a delusion. You see, the definition of a delusion is something you think is reality, right? The one who is deluded cannot know that they’re deluded, or the delusion comes to an end. And so even though you may have moments of clarity where you get it, the ego will cause you to forget it and to go back into the belief that, “No, no, this is real; that’s the delusion. Believing in God is the delusion! Believing in nirvana is the delusion. No, there’s no way out. This is it!”
And so as long as one has that belief and you believe this is reality, you won’t make contact with what is actually reality. So this is the great trick that has to be overcome. This is the magia of maya. And if we can’t see through the magic trick, then we will be fooled by it, OK?
However, if you move to the nirvanic state of mind, from nirvana you will perceive clearly that there is no samsara, and that there is no nirvana, that nirvana itself was a samsaric delusion. But you have to be in nirvana to recognize that. So it is another state, a non-egoic state, but because that nonegoic state is beyond description, beyond boundary, beyond place, beyond an ability to know it as something that is an object or has any degree of otherness, it does not exist because what exists is only that which is objectifiable, and nirvana is not, right? It’s too subtle to be able to be perceived because it’s nothing other than the most subtle possible level of consciousness that is free, completely, of egoic thoughts, and therefore of any ability for the ego to capture its reality. The ego is gone, you see? And it’s the ego that labels and dreams existences.
And the other aspect of it is the reason why nirvana doesn’t exist is that the nirvana-Self does not keep files. Life for the ego, especially these days, is all about you have to keep files on everything and everyone, and the government is keeping files on you and everyone else. So it’s all about files. And what are files? They’re the past that you can later be blamed and blackmailed and captured, because it was clear that your tendency was, you’ve been radicalized or whatever, you know, all the different scenarios, but everyone is attached to their files, you see? And if to go in nirvana means you burn all your files. Oh my God, that’s terrible! Then how will you know who’s to blame and who did what and how to keep score? You see, all of that is gone. So you are de-filed in another way.
So as I mentioned before, it is forbidden to leave samsara, if you’re in samsara and you’re the ego, it’s a command, you don’t have the option. It’s a command that outranks the ego because it comes as a superego, but it’s coming really from the censor, and you don’t even have access to be able to argue with the one who is forbidding this, but that creates a very difficult obstacle to surmount. As long as you’re under the jurisdiction of the ego’s legal system, you do not have the right or the power to escape. OK? This is a prison, literally, and until you pay your dues, you can’t get out. But there is no way to pay those dues. And that’s the trick, because every time you try to improve yourself, you’re making more karma. You’re simply ratifying the samsara itself and you’re actually putting another layer of bars on the prison window.
So one has to come to terms with that fact and with the implication: all effort is futile—but so is counter-effort. So these are two important points to keep in mind. You can’t get out of samsara by trying to make effort to do so. However, the counter-effort that your ego is making to stop you from leaving samsara is also futile because samsara doesn’t really exist. So the ego is programmed to want to do something, right? Its question is always, “How do I do it? How do I do it?” Well, that “I” can’t do anything. That “I” is the problem. It has to be eliminated. It can’t do anything to get anywhere. It is delusional in its very nature, and it cannot leave doing for being. It’s always in a state of becoming which requires more effort, more doing and all effort being futile. The ego is on a treadmill and getting nowhere, even if it tries to convince itself it’s making progress, that progress will never lead to actual liberation.
OK, that’s mostly the bad news of the situation. Now we can get to some of the good news of it.
(Shunyamurti writes on whiteboard)
Do I have another adjective? I think I put another one in there. OK. Refer to it as Emptiness.
So in effortless immediate Emptiness, the Real is revealed. OK? So these three are important. It’s effortless, you have stopped all doing and have come to your being. It’s immediate, meaning both without a time lag but also unmediated. There is no medium in which this appears; it doesn’t happen to anyone, and that’s why it is Emptiness. It is an effortless immediate state of Emptiness of ego, and that state is also timeless. So there’s an immediate shift from time to eternity, from samsara to nirvana, and it can happen at any moment, and it is unconditional—this is available to anyone just by stopping making all effort.
But the paradox is there has to be such a yearning to make no effort that that effort of reaching effortlessness burns up the karma of the ego. So there’s a paradoxical relationship with effort and effortlessness. But the effort is an effort to purify the heart, to open the heart. But in that effort, a moment will come when you realize your heart has always been open. You haven’t been in it, but it’s always been open, and that is who you really are, and so the effort immediately becomes effortlessness.
I hope you can read my ragged handwriting.
Effortless Emptiness has neither a past nor a future. That’s what presence means, right? Emptiness is presence. And presence means exactly what it says: you are fully present; so fully present in the now that no trace of past or future remains. That’s why there are no files, because they belong to the past, and therefore all attachments can no longer exist in the present. Attachments exist only in the past as memories and as a longing to return to that memory and bring it into a future, right? So the past and the future are two modes of yearning for not being present, for staying in samsara, because all samsara is, is a past and a future without a present. And past and future, neither of them exist, and so of course the ego is living in a fantasy, it’s living in its mind that has memory traces of the past that it’s still angry about, and projecting onto what’s happening now, creating a future that repeats the past, etc., but it’s never present. It’s always shifting from the past to another edition called “the future”, but of the same, having the same signature sanskaras and scenarios. And these patterns are what make the ego believe it actually exists through time, because it’s perpetuating the past into the future, but it can never be present. And so it’s always in a lack of being because it’s too busy becoming and trying to repeat what has been, to be able to simply be.
And some of the fear of the ego in letting go of past and future is a fear of disorientation. “But I have to make plans! I have to make sure my investments are taken care of! And I have to make sure of this and that, and I need to calculate and strategize,” and all of that. So the mind has to jump from past to future. Well, no it doesn’t.
And that’s the seventh one: in Effortless Emptiness—let’s say EE—in Effortless Emptiness the Self-arising wisdom that comes from that Supreme Self takes over and life becomes spontaneous, and it’s in accord with the Dao, inherently. It’s in accord with the Will of God and everything works out optimally, but it works out optimally for the whole because one is no longer identified with the part, and so it works out with a different optimal than the ego would have. It’s the optimal of the whole intelligence of the Real, not the ideas, beliefs, preconceptions, and wishes of the ego-mind.
And the more we have faith and trust in that Self-arising wisdom which replaces ego chatter, you will receive whatever downloads of information or of energy and spontaneous behavior, that is necessary in any situation, but without leaving that state of total presence. This is the secret of great martial artists and athletes of all kinds, but it’s the secret of anyone who attains genius level performance in any arts or sciences or any field. That’s it. It’s a state of effortless presence in total relaxation, and in total trust and faith and awareness, that is able to slow down time, even stop it or speed it up, or be able to recognize larger chunks of time as all being present until one can actually expand into the entirety of the explicate order being present as the implicate order, as a single thought, a single understanding. But that Self-arising wisdom, to whatever level you have achieved constancy in the Effortless Emptiness, it is filled with wisdom and power and accuracy. So this is the secret of great archery, and you hit the bullseye of Brahman as soon as you are in that Effortless Emptiness.
So that’s the first set. If you get that…
This Post Has 14 Comments
Heidi
25 Jun 2023I just want to say Thank You 🙏
Joseph Hlati
25 Jun 2023I am a South African pensioner and have been listening to the great teacher for sometime and I am learning so much I’m feeling some movement in my thinking. Please sign me up for the free trial membership. I am grateful for the opportunity.
Vajra Sat Yoga
26 Jun 2023Dear Joseph,
Please email Purusha for help signing up. He is our Members Section coordinator and will be happy to assist you.
[email protected]
Blessings and we look forward to having you with us!
Vicki Lim
25 Jun 2023Brilliant analysis!! Thank you for your discussion on the dialectic and using current reality as an example.
James
25 Jun 2023I am a bit disturbed by the implication (if I interpret correctly) that Sandy Hook was some kind of ruse. To so casually imply this in a satsang seems careless and harmful. Also, even as someone who follows the news each day, I was completely lost during the explanation of the recent events in Russia. This is very serious to me and although I love Shunyamurti’s teachings on spirituality, and admire him greatly, I would consider completely abandoning any interest in Sat Yoga unless some further clarification and explanation is given. May I request that this matter be cleared up?
Sincerely,
James
Vajra Sat Yoga
26 Jun 2023Shunyamurti’s reply: As you no doubt know, we the people have lost our formerly inalienable right to free speech. There are many topics that can no longer be discussed publicly without one being canceled, de-platformed, or worse, sued into bankruptcy. The topic you mentioned is one of those forbidden to be debated, as Alex Jones famously discovered to his chagrin, and before him, the renowned philosopher of science Dr. James Fetzer. In particular, the work of Fetzer was coherent, rigorously argued, based on ample evidence, and highly persuasive to many objective analysts. Nonetheless, his reputation was smeared and he was ruined financially. This has happened to many investigators who have delved too deeply into many topics, including that of medical processes, pharmaceuticals, the physiological and psychological effects of masking, and too long a list of others to name. The truth has not yet come into public recognition even about events that happened decades earlier, from the murder of JFK to the Gulf of Tonkin to 911, up to the ongoing sequelae of the mass injections, not to mention other offenses of political corruption and treason. Therefore, those with divergent views on such topics have no choice but to settle for making tangential allusions to such black holes in our informational universe in order to keep such issues alive and to encourage others to do their own due diligence in exploring the work of those who have paid the price for their courageous efforts to uncover prohibited truths. I am not saying that I am a believer in the entire thesis of Fetzer, but only that he has made a prima facie case that something is fishy, and that the case deserves further investigation.
We all have the obligation to stay as informed about important issues as possible by consulting alternative sources of information pursued by dissident intellectuals and to learn to think critically and objectively about them. But in this time of oppression of free thinking, alas, much has to be transmitted between the lines and coded in ways that bypass the heavy hand of censorship. Moreover, we must be willing to tolerate a wide spectrum of views and apply our own mature empirical assessments based on abductive as well as inductive reasoning. If you have done your own thorough investigation of the topic you brought up, and you have come to a different conclusion, then you are entitled to disagree. But if not, you should be thankful that someone has flagged the issue as still being validly open to minority conclusions and worthy of examination. If we do not keep the embers of free thought alive to pass on to future generations, then you can be sure there will not be any. If God decides to end this world because of the atrophy of the human spirit of freedom, then so be it. But I do not want to be an accomplice to that demise of the priceless life of the mind. If you abandon your interest in Sat Yoga over this, that is your right. I will continue speaking forthrightly and expressing outside-the-box views to those who have an appetite to encounter novel perspectives on reality that always aim to break through the veils of ordinary delusion into the taboo realms of both relative and absolute Truth.
Namaste,
Shunyamurti
Dev Varyani
26 Jun 2023Brilliant analysis!
Alex P.
26 Jun 2023Shunyamurti, you are a hero. How do you juggle running non-stop sessions of wisdom teachings while also keeping up with current events and giving it all enough thought to provide such a detailed analysis?
Veerle Verstraete
27 Jun 2023Thanks for this satsang and for such a clear explanation of current events!
Joseph
27 Jun 2023Love your reply Shunya and I would not follow/practice Sat Yoga as fervently as I do if you did not know of the hidden agendas and lies of the ill-ites ( as I call them, lol. ) that has made every pillar of society an abomination to God and the human race… Waking up to the facts 10+ yrs ago led me to discover that I’ve been duped, propagandized,indoctrinated and crate trained since birth; and a unbeknownst willing participant in the ill that has been done…
It was hard to accept that an anti God/Human agenda has been going on for 100s of yrs and more before I was born and it more than ever changed/charged my spiritual life to one of wholehearted devotion to our/my Good Friend ( OM Friend for short, lol ) and the Family Angelic… I.e. God and the body of God, total consciousness in all forms…
As St George Carlin stated ” History is not happenstance it’s conspiritorial….carefully planned and executed by those in power… Didn’t dawn on me how true a statement that was an is. It also led my into a deep dive in research and rabbit holes to discover the extent of the lies perpetrated and scripted…and it turned out that most everything I ever thought I knew was a lie….like evolution, history, Government, NASA, science,food,medicine,religion and…on and on. So… one taboo subject I would love for you to address would be the shape of our flat water, shaped earth and ice wall plane of existence…the biggest lie perpetrated and once investigated shows a globe world with curved water preposterous… Also is there just the one firmament or 7. A good source of proofs and information on this subject can be found on Eric Dubay’s YouTube and his other channels… This fact can’t help but change ones views on it all and a new appreciation for our creator and this Matrix, Stage play, movie DVD or whatever this dream/memory of OM Beloved truly is, lol. Also supporting it brings in the Beatitude, Blessed are they which are Persecuted for Righteousness….as just being on God’s side now has shown me… 😃
Truly appreciate the work you do and love the knowledge I’ve received from the countless videos I’ve taken within. Hope to one day before the end of days, lol… to visit your beautiful Ashram…it also would be a pleasure to consider a more permanent move too to…
Thank You
God Bliss and Bless
In Spirituality
Joseph E R
P.S. A reply from ya would gratefully be appreciated… if even only by email ❤
James
27 Jun 2023Thank you for the thorough and thoughtful reply. I truly appreciate it and am actually a bit flattered that you would respond to my question directly. I agree in principle with most of everything you have said here as far as I can tell. I have nowhere near the intellect that you possess and find the experience of encountering your mind through video and audio recordings a captivating and enriching experience. However, when your talks veer toward the subject of politics and the impending doomsday scenario outcome for humanity that you continue to allude to without, in my view, much of any supporting evidence, I feel my heart and mind recoil. That is very clearly an insane and illegitimate claim. Having mulled over the recent satsang I referred to, I have reflected that I do not wish to delve so far into the realm of the intellect and dissidence as is wanted here anyhow. Rather I am reminded of a teaching from the book “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind” of which you are undoubtedly familiar- while discussing the concept of Right Practice Suzuki tells of the Buddha’s dissatisfaction with intellectual knowledge and philosophy.
“He could not find the answer in […] philosophies. He was not interested in some metaphysical existence, but in his own body and mind, here and now. […] That was his enlightenment.”
With continued love and admiration,
Namaste
James
Vajra Sat Yoga
27 Jun 2023Dear James,
I understand your ego’s position. And of course you are free to part ways with Sat Yoga. But do please understand the teachings before you go. In a nutshell, the teaching is that there is One Intelligence (whether you label that One God, One Buddha Mind, One Brahman, or One Self). There is no world separate from that One. You are that One. No world was ever created, none will be destroyed. Time, space, matter, and movement are all illusions within the Mind of God/Buddha/Brahman. This can be directly perceived by simply abiding as pure presence, rather than falling into intellectual conceptualization.
So, in that sense, I agree with your quote from Suzuki Roshi. But, at the level of the illusion, for those still enmeshed in the illusion, the Zen masters also teach that we are in the final period of the world dream, when the Dharma is nearly lost, and humans have become egocentric, conflicted, and in a state of demonic destructiveness that threatens the annihilation of the world. At that moment of deepest darkness, the full revelation of the Buddha Nature, Nirvana, and the whole extraordinary Truth will become directly perceived by all souls. In the same way, the Christians, Jews, and Muslims declare that we have received all the signs of the coming Revelation, the Messianic Age, Redemption, and the disappearance of the current world followed by God’s creation of a new heavenly world. The same teaching is given by all traditions. We have arrived at the end of time, but it is the most auspicious end possible, and we are also at the brink of a new Beginning.
You can perceive all the signs just by reading the news. You do not require an intellectual study of the matter. But since the higher Truth is that there is no world, then just enjoy your effortless Self-realization. For those who are ready for that, such is the teaching. For those who are invested in the world, then the teaching of the world’s end is useful in motivating souls to awaken now. May you be among those who require nothing more than instantaneous recognition of the eternal Self and be done with all teachings.
Namaste,
Shunyamurti
Hoseyn Vosouq
27 Jun 2023Wonderful, intelligent analysis. Thanks much, very much.
Barry Roberts
27 Jun 2023A ‘random’ thought has an emotional energy beneath that thought. Surrendering that emotional charge by feeling the energy, accepting that energy and letting it be. This removes similar thoughts from the mind. Ongoing practice of surrendering the underlying energy of every thought brings the mind to a silence. At first the Presence of the Silence is felt as it is a new experience. As time goes by the experience of the Presence becomes the normal. The Silence is always there, has always been, we just didn’t see past all those ‘random’ thoughts. Still requires a little effort to be in the Silence and the Presence. One day it will take a little effort to be with the ego. God Bless your beautiful work. Some are blessed with communication skills and some, not so much.